Property Tax Bill Oopsies!

Marty Chilton, Sr. Investigative Reporter (now w/SpellCheck)

Downtown - Missoula County property tax bills will soon arrive mailboxes from Seeley Lake to San Diego, from Alberton to Albuquerque, but don’t expect accuracy or timeliness.

For the landed gentry, after the sticker shock of biennial valuations earlier this year, the good news is that the tax they pay will likely be lower for most taxpayers, owing to the changes made in the legislature earlier this year. Local leaders are quick to point this out as they increase their budgets to meet spending levels from the heady ARPA days.

The bad news, though, is that rumblings have emerged of serious errors in the assessment of taxes and fees for the many Rural Special Improvement Districts managed by the County.

Earlier this year, some residents in Linda Vista received a notice that they had been left off the rolls of the special improvement district serving their community. In essence, they weren’t paying the assessment the community had agreed to. Worse yet, others were, but should not have been.

To further the uncertainty, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation entered the

fray as well, insisting on the billing of an additional $400,000 in forest fire protection assessments that weren’t collected in the 2024 tax year due to a “clerical error,” according to a DNRC representative not authorized to speak on the record. These new amounts will appear as additional line items on some 2025 tax bills.

Those are just some of the problems, casting county leadership, eager to present themselves as tax experts, as either careless, or incompetent, or both. Sources tell us that there has not been a comprehensive process for verifying that the taxes billed are, in fact, the taxes owed. Without this fundamental verification, it is impossible at this stage to know how widespread the tax billing problem is.

To get to the bottom of this issue, our intrepid investigative team imagined reaching out to caricatures of local officials. Below is how we believe they would have responded.

Professor/Commissioner Josh Almighty wanted to assure taxpayers that the matter was well in-hand. “The important thing to remember about the error is that we don’t have a sales tax, or a tourist tax, or a gas tax, or any other method for raising revenue, so if the average taxpayer were to give it the right amount of thought, they’d be grateful for the minor errors in our property taxes. Some of those errors were even in the favor of the taxpayer. It’s a teachable moment about the importance of following the lead of the Board of County Commissioners.”

Chief Financial Officer Addled Andrew, whose office oversees RSID management and the tax process, said confidently after waking, “Huh, what’s going on?”

County Administrative Chief Clownsbury told us that “This is the first I’ve heard of any issues, literally the first time ever about any issue at all with respect to the County, and taxpayers should have full confidence in my ability to admit to knowing, or rather not knowing, anything about this.”

Election Advantage for the Milquetoast Hegemony!

University District - After parachuting a palatable candidate into Ward 3, the landed gentry, i.e. conservative democrats, have successfully struck out at progressivism in one of the city’s wealthiest areas. The now perhaps soon-to-be former city councillor, Comrade Carlino, though coming in second will move on to the general election against Jennifer Savage, the former councillor from north of the tracks who spectacularly landed a modest fixer-upper among the upper crust of the area just in time to qualify.

It’s been no secret that local democrats have despised Comrade Carlino’s ultra-progressive take on local responsibility and his often less-wise brashness and fire when dealing with city personnel, such as when he messaged the police chief a wish for a speedy career change.

A local Democrat was overheard, “There’s really no place in the modern Democratic Party for someone with an activist’s spirit. We’re really more of a signs-and-banners party. Making people’s lives better isn’t where we are.”

We won’t know the winner until after the November General Election, but given the victory lap taken by Comrade Carlino’s adversaries on Council, they believe the momentum belongs to Savage.

Upon Your Retirement, We Hardly Knew You Worked There

Corner of Ryman and West Pine - After a long and successful career (perhaps somewhere else), County Auditor and Financial Services lapdog, David Wall, has announced his retirement as of the end of this year.

Best know for anonymity, Mr. Wall has maintained a low profile and ensured that he never made any substantial difference to the public. Wall, responsible for overseeing policies related to financial activities, will be best remembered for discovering recently that many of his responsibilities were delegated to the Financial Services Office he was supposed to audit.

Eager to begin his retirement, Mr. Wall, 55, will not finish out his term, upholding the local custom of allowing the Board of County Commissioners to circumvent the democratic process and appoint someone who will later run as the incumbent. Though this custom among local elected officials is seen by some as unethical, sources assure us that Mr. Wall doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Our team imagined asking local elected leaders to share how they enjoyed the summer season.

TT: What did you get up to this summer?
JA: “Boston had the great honor of hosting me for a few weeks, and having now graduated from Harvard Summer Camp, I can now more confidently patronize the electorate and explain all the ways they don’t know how taxes work.”
TT: And what of the issues uncovered relating to the inaccuracy of tax billing?
JA: “The important thing—the thing that most people neglect to understand is that I went to Harvard Summer Camp, and now I’m even less likely to be ignorant of fundamental processes under my purview.”

Professor/Commissioner, Josh Almighty

TT: Madam Mayor, how was your summer?
AD: “You know, instead of vacation, I spent the summer on the campaign trail to continue the work I’ve been doing.”
TT: And what have you found to be the hardest part of campaigning?
AD: “Hands down, the hardest thing is addressing the housing crisis without providing any substantive plan. I walk a tight rope, remaining focused on what’s important, without getting drawn into the messy business of actually doing something.”

Mayor Andrea Doolittle

Treasurer, Bigfork Tyler

TT: How did you spend the summer months?
BT: “Lake House, baby! The city is just crawling with tourists and poors in the summer. It doesn’t even have a suitable lake for someone in my demographic. So, I did what I do every summer. I fucked off to someplace better.”
TT: And what of the tax billing issues? Were you able to remedy those even with extensive time off?
BT: “Thankfully, I farmed-out that nonsense years ago to the Financial Services Department, which is run by the Commissioners, so I get to do nothing, and still walk away clean! What a gig!”

From the Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to the Tumbleweed Tribune

Wilson Thistlewaite, OBE

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to The Tumbleweed Tribune. This publication is entirely satire, except the parts that are parody, but not including the rather unpleasant truths buried within the tired jokes and silly drawings.

Throughout our stories, we aim to take to task those in charge and highlight the absurd. That said, I make this commitment on behalf of the whole team at the Tribune - we will not punch down. The target of our attention and occasional ire will always be those of privilege and influence, and we will be ruthless in that endeavor.

Much of what our team publishes in these pages will be both funny and tragic, petty and poignant, and satire wrapped in not-so-subtle sobriquet.

Welcome to the Tribune.

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